Happy First Birthday Sarah's Kitchen Diary

This is my 83rd post and one year since I started my blog on 22nd August 2011.

I wanted to mark the first anniversary in some way. I've been interested in cooking since I was a very small girl. I'd help my mum and my nan in the kitchen and I especially love baking. I think I've mentioned before my first baking book was Mary Berry's Ultimate Cake Book, which has been revamped and republished in various guises over the years. I've lost count of the number of copies I've bought as gifts and genuinely every recipe works! My copy, although well looked after, is also well loved. The recipes I've baked the most invariably have a smudge of cake batter or chocolate on them. These days a lot of the recipes that I've made time and time again are committed to memory and in even when I play around and create a recipe 'from scratch' the starting point and the baking knowledge is likely to come either from my mum or Mary Berry.

So in making a first 'birthday' cake I had to make something influenced by my mum and Mary Berry.

I have taken Mary Berry's basic Victoria sponge but added some fresh raspberries to the batter. This is something my mum used to do for a quick pudding when I was young, typically served with custard and using whatever fruit was in season, raspberries, blackberries or apples.

I also added some white chocolate to the buttercream as I think this makes it more of a celebration cake and goes very well with the raspberries.

I toyed with the idea of making a sophisticated celebration cake with minimal decoration but decided that because I could and as it was a first 'birthday' I would go to town with the decoration. So I decorated the cake with plenty of sprinkles and sparkles and topped with some long silver candles.

If you want to recreate this please remember that the addition of raspberries to the cake will make it very moist and prone to go off quickly so eat it or freeze it within a day or two otherwise you'll end up with a mouldy mess. I never seem to have that problem as cake never lasts long in my house!

Here is a picture of my creation.





Happy First 'Birthday' to
Sarah's Kitchen Diary!

Here is a picture of the bottom when it came out of the oven. You can see the raspberries.



Here is my bible!





Recipe

8oz self raising flour (I use sponge flour as I think it gives a better texture)
8oz caster sugar (I use unrefined)
8oz margarine or butter (I always use Stork as I think it gives a better texture and have seen Mary Berry do the same so much be good)
4 large free range eggs
2 tsp baking powder
A couple of handful's of raspberries

For the icing:
250g butter
500g icing sugar
100g white chocolate

Start by pre-heating the oven to 180C.

Line two 8" round cake tins

Put all of the cake ingredients, apart from the raspberries, in a bowl and mix until blended.

Pour half of the mixture into each cake tin and place in the pre-heated own for 30-40 mins until a skewer, when placed into the cake, comes out clean and they are springy to the touch. Remember from the tins and put on a wire rack to cool completely.

Whilst the cakes are cooling make the icing. Put the butter in a stand mixer and beat for a few minutes until very pale, light and fluffy. Gradually add the icing sugar a little at a time, mixing well after each addition. Once all of the icing sugar is incorporated leave the icing to keep mixing, whilst you melt the chocolate, as this will make the icing lighter and fluffier.

I always melt chocolate in the microwave on full power but for bursts of 15-30 secs stirring in between each one, but I know some people are scared of the chocolate burning so feel free to melt it in a pan suspended over a bowl of boiling water. Once the chocolate is melted, stop the mixer and put the chocolate to one side to cool slightly. This avoids the hot chocolate melting the butter and ruining your icing.

Once the chocolate is cooler pour it into the mixing bowl and blend until it is incorporated into the icing.

Put half of the icing on one cake and then place the other cake on the top to create a sandwich. Add the remaining icing to the top and then decorate with your choice of sprinkles, sparkles and candles.

Enjoy!

Herby Rainbow Coleslaw

I love summer. The long warm days, light nights and the feeling that there is time to achieve anything. I know this summer hadn't been perfect but, in London at least, we've had enough decent weather to make my mood more buoyant.

This is a quick salad I made on a lovely summers evening. I had some leftover fresh beetroot and decide to make a take on coleslaw.

I shredded beetroot, carrot and cabbage (you could also add onion but I'm not a fan of raw onion) and then added a tarted up mayonnaise.

My friend who is pregnant was eating with us so I used bought mayonnaise to avoid raw egg and enhanced it with a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, seasoning, lemon juice and finely chopped parsley and mint and then mixed it with the vegetables to form a fabulously colourful salad.

This is great with a BBQ or a cooked chicken and salad.


The herbs came from my garden

Pork escalopes with lemon and parsely

I eat almost anything but I'm really not the biggest fan of pork but this recipe is so simple and so good that it almost has me converted!

It was another recipe which my mum and I picked up during our cooking holiday in Italy. Matilde, the teacher we had was the queen of making something delicious out of a handful of ingredients, extremely good ingredients admittedly.

I always advocate buying the best quality meat you can afford. Maybe eating it less often or cheaper cuts to do so. It makes me sad thinking about how some of the poor animals are treated and I genuinely think decent meat tastes better. Not to mention the antibiotics and growth hormones they pump into factory farmed meat.

Start by taking some thinly sliced pork loin, place it between two layers of cling film and bash it flatter with a meat cleaver, rolling pin or something else heavy. You want to make the pork quite thin without breaking it completely. Dust with flour.

Take a hot pan and a little oil and fry the pork in batches, cooking for a couple of minutes on each side. Once cooked place on some kitchen roll on a plate and season well. Repeat until all the pork is cooked.

Return all of the meat to the hot pan. Add a handful of finely chopped parsley, the juice of one lemon and top with slices of lemon. Place the lid on the pan and turn the pan off. Leave to rest for a few minutes.

I served with green veg and salad.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo so I'll have to make it again sometime soon.

1000th Tweet: Grandma's Birthday Cake

This will be my 1000th tweet so I thought it should be a special post. It was my Grandma's birthday this week so my sister and I made her a cake to help her celebrate. She's in a home now but she's always enjoyed homemade cake so we thought she'd like to have one to share with the other residents. When we went to see her her mind still seemed so young and it reminded me of this lovely story I read earlier in the week.
It is a basic Victoria sponge sandwiched with raspberry jam and then iced with a vanilla buttercream tinted pink with food colouring using this rose effect

Guest Post: Easy Spanish Chicken

One of my team mentioned to me that although had an interest in food he couldn't cook. After asking a few questions it did seem that he knew how to cook almost nothing. It doesn't surprise me as if you don't have a parent or similar who has an interest in cooking then it is quite hard to learn. Most recipe books are quite inaccessible and assume a basic level of knowledge.
So I set him the challenge of cooking a meal. I will post his results once he's made the meal next week.
I chose one of my favourite simple, one pot meals and tried to write the recipe as clearly as possible. This recipe is not necessarily authentically Spanish but originally it was given to me by a friend's Spanish mum, hence the name.
If anyone else knows someone who claims not to be able to cook ask them to have a go at this recipe and send me a photo and/or comments to let me know how they get on.

Easy Spanish Chicken

Serves 4 but can be easily halved or doubled

Ingredients:
4 chicken portions like the ones in the photo below or you could use 8 chicken thighs instead.
Salt and pepper
Two large peppers maybe a different colours
Two large onions
Two large potatoes (I leave these out to make it 'cleaner')
Two cloves of garlic (these are the small ‘segments’ from a whole bulb)
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 head of broccoli
Water
Equipment:
An oven
A large pan or dish which is oven proof
A knife
A chopping board
A tin opener
A wine glass
A saucepan
A strainer (if you have one)




Turn your oven on to pre-heat. You want the temperature to be 180C. If the oven is a fan oven you always have to put the temperature 20C less so it would need to be set to 160C. This is about 350F or Gas Mark 4
Take a large pan or dish, which is able to go in the oven. Something like a lasagne dish would be good. If you don’t have one large dish two smaller ones will do, but don’t be tempted to squash everything into one small one.
Get 4 chicken portions and place them in a single layer in the dish. Remember when handling chicken that you need to make sure that the raw chicken doesn’t touch anything that won’t be cooked so once you have put the chicken in the pan, wash your hands and anything the chicken has touched well.
Sprinkle salt and pepper over the chicken you want a pinch of each.
Cut the peppers in half and cut out the stalk out of the pepper and all of the seeds and throw these away. Take the pepper halves and cut each one into four roughly equal pieces. Scatter these on top of the chicken.
Peel the onions. This is easiest if you cut the top and bottom off the onion and then cut the onion in half first. Cut each half into 3 wedges. Scatter these on top of the chicken.
Cut the potatoes into half and cut each half into quarters scatter these on top of the chicken. There is no need to peel them.
Peel the garlic and chop it into small pieces. The smaller the better. You can also crush it a little with the flat side of a knife.
Take the lid off the tin of tomatoes and put them in a bowl, stir in the tomato puree and the garlic.
Spoon the tomato into 4-6 small piles around the chicken and vegetables and then carefully pour a small wine glass worth of water around the edge.
If the pan or dish you are using has a lid put it on. If not take a piece of tin foil and place it over the top and scrunch the sides to make sure it stays on.
Put the dish into the oven and set a timer for 1 hour. Check it about half way through by lifting up a corner of the foil. Be careful of the steam. If it looks dry add another wine glass full of water.
After 45 minutes take some broccoli and cut it into smaller pieces or ‘florets’ place it in a pan of boiling water and cook it for 3-5 minutes. I tend to boil the water in a kettle first for speed but you can boil the water in the pan just pop the lid on else it will take ages to boil. Drain the water off the broccoli using a strainer. If you don’t have one if you are careful you always fish them out with a spoon or fork.
After an hour take the chicken out of the oven and serve with the broccoli.

Pink Lady Apple Sorbet

I love fresh fruity sorbet's and ice creams. There used to be a fab little place in Ealing which sold a huge variety, but since it closed I've been missing my fix.

Although they did more interesting flavours I always really enjoyed their green apple sorbet so decided to have a go at recreating my own version.

I love Pink Lady apples. They are so much sweeter and juicier then most varieties of apple and as they are naturally so sweet it meant I had to add very little sugar.

This recipe is so simple. I started by making a apple purée as the base by cooking 8 apples chopped into rough chunks (pips, skin and all), adding 1 tbsp of caster sugar and the juice of half a lime for some zing plus a small glass of water and cooked until the apples were soft and starting to fall apart. I let it cool for a few minutes and then sieved the mixture to end up with a smooth purée which was a lovely pale pink colour without adding and food colouring. I popped the purée into the fridge to chill.

Once cold I churned in my ice cream maker until frozen.

I have one of the basic ice cream makers which you freeze the bowl and then churn the mixture until frozen. It's not great and I want to buy the ice cream maker attachment for my Kitchen Aid but unfortunately I can't justify that at the moment. In the meantime it does the job! If you don't have an ice cream maker you can place the mixture in the freezer and give it a good stir every hour or so to break up the ice crystals.

Once frozen either eat immediately or pop into a freezer proof container and freeze until you want to use it.

I served the sorbet by piling spoonfuls into a glass and topping with a spring of mint. Such a lovely, light and relatively healthy pudding.





I am entering this into Kavey Eats Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream challenge this month, which has fruit at the theme.

Virtuous Red Velvet Cake

As much as I love red velvet cake I always question if it really is a good idea to use the best part of a bottle of food colouring purely for the visual effect.

Now this isn't a virtuous cake from the point of view of fat or calories or anything but rather because it uses all natural ingredients to achieve the colour rather than red food colouring.

I wasn't really sure where to start with this recipe other than thinking that beetroot and raspberries both made very red smoothies/juices so probably had a reasonable chance of replacing the colouring. I looked at lots of recipes for red velvet cake, carrot cake and chocolate and beetroot cakes. I also looked at Harry Eastwood's book as she uses a lot of vegetables.

None of them had a recipe for red velvet, with no food colouring so I made one up. The mixture was slightly wet so next time I might use less liquid and it isn't quite the same flavour so I think I'd use maybe 1 tbsp more of cocoa but I have to say I'm pleased with the over all result. In particular that I managed to get a good depth of colour with all natural ingredients.

Recipe

Makes a 9" square cake plus an extra cup cake

10oz self raising cake flour
10oz caster sugar
8oz margarine (I always use stork)
4 eggs
1/4 pint whole milk
1/4 pint natural yoghurt
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1tsp vanilla bean extract
4oz raw beetroot, grated
4oz frozen raspberries, defrosted, blender and sieved to remove all seeds.

Measure the yoghurt, milk into a jug. Add the beetroot and raspberry purée and blitz with a hand blender until very smooth.

Beat together the margarine and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing in between each.

Add the flour, cocoa, baking powder, cream of tartar and blend.

Add the yoghurt mixture and stir well until combined.

I took a large spoonful of the mixture out to make a single cupcake. I did this so I could check the colour and also so I had some 'spare' to crumble for the decoration on the top.

Pour the rest of the mixture into a lined and greased tin and bake in an over pre-heated to 180C for about 40-50 mins (the cup cake will need to come out after 15-20 mins).

Once cooked remove from the oven and cool.

I iced the cake with a standard buttercream with cream cheese mixed in and the topped with crumbs of red velvet cake from the cupcake I made.

Here is the finished result





And the cupcake so you can see the colour achieved





I am going to submit this as part of the Alpha Bakes challenge from The More than Occasional Baker and Caroline Makes. This months letter is V hence the Virtuous Red Velvet cake